Closing summary
Donald Trump’s inauguration is mere days away, but leading Democrats say they have no interest in going along with the incoming president’s plans to expand the United States. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said his lawmakers were not elected to help seize the Panama Canal by force, while Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer challenged Trump to come up with a plan to lower costs for Americans if he wants his party’s support for changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico. On a visit to France, the outgoing secretary of state, Antony Blinken, called Trump’s idea of taking control of Greenland a bad idea that is “not going to happen”. Elsewhere, legal wrangling over special counsel Jack Smith’s report documenting his fruitless prosecutions of Trump continues. The justice department told a court considering a challenge to their release that it planned to make public only Smith’s findings around Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and reserve the evidence in the classified documents case for a select group of lawmakers in Congress.
Here’s more about what happened today:
Dignitaries paid tribute to ex-president Jimmy Carter, who is lying in state at the US Capitol ahead of his funeral Thursday.
Joe Biden told USA Today in what may be his last interview with a print publication as president that he thinks he would have won re-election, but was not sure he could have served the whole term.
Trump appealed to the supreme court to pause his sentencing hearing scheduled for Friday in the case against him on hush money charges.
Denmark’s foreign minister said his country would be open to discussing with the US security concerns involving Greenland, which it controls, but downplayed talk of it becoming the 51st state.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s nominee to lead the department of health and human services, made the rounds on Capitol hill, where one Republican senator appeared uneasy with his anti-vaccine views.
What do the people of Greenland think of Donald Trump’s desire to take control of the island?
Reuters asked around in Nuuk, the capital of the Danish-controlled, autonomously government island, which Donald Trump Jr visited yesterday.
Here’s what residents said:
Mikael Ludvidsen, a resident of capital Nuuk, was skeptical about the president-elect’s intentions, telling Reuters: “I think he’s talking too loudly. I don’t think you can take him seriously when he says he’s going to take us over by force.”
“I think it’s too much,” said local Niels Nielsen. Greenland “can’t be bought,” he added.
But others said aligning with a superpower might be helpful for Greenland, which has a population of just 57,000 people.
Resident Jens Ostermann, carrying a small child bundled up against the winter cold, said: “We should partner with a great power because Greenland is a rich country, we have everything here.”
Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede has urged residents to remain calm and united. But he has also emphasized his desire for Greenland to become fully independent from Denmark, its former colonial ruler.
Some locals sported Make America Great Again caps to greet Trump Jr., with Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq headlining its report: “Warm but reserved welcome for Donald Trump Jr.”
Opinions among Greenlanders about the future of their country are divided, according to Aki-Matilda Hoegh-Dam, a member of Greenland’s social-democratic Siumut party in the Danish parliament.
“Trump’s reaction is a statement of how important Greenland is in the geopolitical area at this moment,” she said.
